Local schools bracing for cuts

Teacher Debra Gonzalez conducts reading lessons with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class, on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate / For the San Antonio Express-News

Teacher Debra Gonzalez conducts reading lessons with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

Teacher Debra Gonzalez interacts with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

Teacher Debra Gonzalez conducts reading lessons with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

Teacher's aide Gabriella Telles, left, conducts reading lessons with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset,

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

Teacher Debra Gonzalez interacts with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

A student participates in art lessons during a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

Photo By Darren Abate/Darren Abate/San Antonio Express

Teacher's aide Gabriella Telles conducts reading lessons with students in a pre-K Head Start bilingual class on Feb. 27, 2013, at Somerset Early Childhood Elementary in Somerset.

With automatic federal spending cuts looming, San Antonio public school superintendents and university leaders are crunching numbers once again.

Two years after massive state cuts to education funding, local educational institutions stand to lose millions of federal dollars due to “sequestration” cuts set to kick in Friday, triggered by Washington's ongoing budget impasse.

The area's three military school districts will be the first to feel the pinch but programs from Head Start to research grants eventually will see fewer federal dollars.

Sequestration cuts could force layoffs of 7 percent of the workforce next fiscal year at Lackland Independent School District, which gets about half its revenue from the federal government, Superintendent Burnie Roper said.

School districts on military bases, including Lackland, Randolph Field and Fort Sam Houston ISDs, have no local tax base, so they depend far more heavily on federal funding — namely a program called Impact Aid, whose payments for the 2012-13 school year would be diminished.

Cuts to other federal education programs won't be felt until the 2013-14 school year.

“The scary part about sequestration is not this year,” said Randolph Field Superintendent Billy Walker. “It's that it's a 10-year project.”

He's bracing for annual cuts of 8 percent of the district's federal funding, and “if, in 10 years, 80 percent of our federal funds are gone, that would be catastrophic,” Walker said.

Officials at some area higher education institutions said they are unsure just how and when they'd feel the cuts.

The Texas A&M University System estimates the greatest impact will be to research, for which it receives about $750 million annually, the spokeswoman for Texas A&M University-San Antonio, Marilu Reyna, said in an email.

For the entire University of Texas System, officials have said, the first year of cuts could amount to $78 million. The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio stands to lose $5.2 million in federal funds over the year — the largest portion of that from the National Institutes of Health.

TSTA spokesman Clay Robison said educators are frustrated with “the general unwillingness of lawmakers to see education as a priority in protecting its funding.”

Josh Sanderson, a lobbyist with ATPE, guessed that all public school students could be affected by sequestration because school districts will spread the pain evenly.

“They won't be able to not provide services to low-income and special education students, so will likely cut other programs that could be considered as nonessential to make budget,” Sanderson said.

According to estimates by the state's Legislative Budget Board, close to $168 million in cuts are to hit Texas public schools in the first year alone.

They will bite hardest in areas with high numbers of low income students and English learners, and cities with military bases, said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman with the Texas Education Agency.

“San Antonio could be one of the most impacted communities because you have a heavy military presence, a large low income population and a large English as a second language population,” she said.

Several local school districts are already drafting plans to deal with a 5 to 10 percent cut to federal funding but most say their numbers remain hazy.

Large districts with high numbers of the most at-risk and low-income families and those with special needs could be hit hard — as much as $2.5 million to $4 million in San Antonio ISD.

Northside ISD, the city's largest school district, projects losses of $1.8 million to $3 million.

Head Start, a federally funded preschool program targeting low income kids, also is slated for broad cuts. City officials, who currently manage that funding for school districts, said cuts would likely hit next school year but couldn't estimate how much.

Somerset ISD parent Katherine Alaquinez said cuts to Head Start would mean that other children might not have the same opportunities her own did.

Her daughter Kaitlynn and son Patrick attended its classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, where they learned to socialize, anticipate and follow classroom routine and otherwise prepare for kindergarten.

“They got a leg up,” Alaquinez said of Head Start. “Coming into kinder (without it), we know that they wouldn't be at the level they are now.”

Superintendents from the area's military school districts plan to be in Washington this weekend to plead with lawmakers for some relief.